Back eight years ago, XSLT had just been released and yet, missing features began to be missing. A few features were identified as possible extensions to and within the context of the standard recommendation, and were gathered under one single project: EXSLT.

EXSLT helped a lot writing XSLT 1.0 stylesheets that are portable across several processors, and showed the way for some features of what was going to become XSLT 2.0.

Now, XSLT 2.0 is just two years old. And yet, missing features begin to be missing. It is now time for EXSLT 2.0! As EXSLT has been launched soon after XSLT 1.0 was released, it is time to define what EXSLT 2.0 should provide in the next few years.

This introduction presents the EXSLT 2.0 initiative, some of its goals, and ideas about useful extensions. It will introduce a proposal of HTTP client extension, and show possible usages by example. Eventually, it will provide a description of the potential extensions landscape and possible applications.